BRITISH FERTILITY 



beneath ; gulls, gannets, cormorants, and solan-geese 

 prey upon them from above ; while the fishermen 

 from a vast fleet of boats scoop them up by the mill- 

 ion. The birds plunge and scream, the men shout 

 and labor, the sea is covered with broken and 

 wounded fish, the shore exhales the odor of the de- 

 caying offal, which also attracts the birds and the 

 vermin ; and, altogether, the scene is thoroughly 

 European. Yet the herring supply does not fail ; 

 and when the shoals go into the lochs, the people say 

 they contain two parts fish to one of water. 



One of the most significant facts I observed while 

 in England and Scotland was the number of eggs in 

 the birds'-nests. The first nest I saw, which was 

 that of the meadow pipit, held six eggs ; the second, 

 which was that of the willow warbler, contained 

 seven. Are these British birds then, I said, like the 

 people, really more prolific than our own ? Such is, 

 undoubtedly, the fact. The nests I had observed 

 were not exceptional ; and when a boy told me he 

 knew of a wren's nest with twenty-six eggs in it, I 

 was half inclined to believe him. The common Brit- 

 ish wren, which is nearly identical with our winter 

 wren, often does lay upward of twenty eggs, while 

 ours lays from five to six. The long-tailed titmouse 

 lays from ten to twelve eggs ; the marsh tit from 

 eight to ten ; the great tit from six to nine ; the 

 blue-bonnet from six to eighteen ; the wryneck often 

 as many as ten ; the nut-hatch, seven ; the brown 

 creeper, nine ; the kinglet, eight ; the robin, seven ; 



